The celebration of God's intervention in righteousness

Psalm 66 celebrates this intervention in righteousness. Men are
called to see God's works, but (v. 6) it is the very same God who
once delivered Israel before out of Egypt. Verse 8 calls upon the
nations brought into connection with God, to bless the God of the
remnant, that is, of Israel. They had been brought through every
kind of sorrow and oppression, to prove and try them as silver,
but now they would go before Him and praise Him. They had cried,
been righteous, were heard, and found mercy; their prayer was not
turned away, nor God's mercy from them. Thus after the sorrows
(seen clearly now as the way and hand of God with them), to the
righteous there is arisen up light in the darkness. They can pay
the vows uttered in their distress, and tell to others the blessed
and sure deliverance of the Lord who cares for the righteous, and
has indeed heard their cry. But it is a deliverance by terrible
acts of righteousness on God's part, the display of His
intervention in judgment in the government of this world. We see,
as indeed in so many other psalms, how it is in the Jewish
remnant, though not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him,
that God displays His government of this world; as it is in them,
which is the subject of the next psalm, that the blessing of the
world takes place.